Math homework.

There have always been people in the fan community whose commitment was so complete that they were compelled to determine the validity of the science portion of science fiction - to do things like calculate whether or not the U.S.S. Enterprise actually could travel the 16.5 light years from Earth to 40 Eridani A in four days* and so on.  

For the most part, I haven't been one of those people. I generally give most scientific questions the benefit of the doubt, or attribute any possible discrepancies to creative license.  However, I recently ran across the following paragraph in the David Weber/Steve White military SF collaboration In Death Ground, and it made me just a little curious - it was just a bit too glib:

"Fifteen light-seconds," Trang reported. "Coming into - missile launch! Multiple hostile launches! One hundred twenty plus inbound. Impact in two-seven seconds from mark!"

Okay, let's do some math.  They're fifteen light seconds away from the ships launching the missiles. Light travels 299,792 kilometers in one second, so that's 4,496,880 kilometers.**  Average speed or velocity (v) is calculated by dividing displacement*** (Δx or x) by time (t) , which gives us a result of 166,551 kilometers/second, which kind of makes sense if you just roughly calculate it - 15 light seconds, 27 seconds travel time, so a little bit faster than half the speed of light.

 However, that's the average velocity - obviously if you start at zero k/s, you need to accelerate to a higher speed to cover that distance in the same rate as if you had hit the ground running, so to speak. Thanks again to Google™, we find that acceleration (a) = 2x/t² - 2v0/t, which gives us a constant acceleration of 12,337,119 m/s² squared  (v0 is starting velocity, which in this case is presumably zero - or perhaps a negative value, the starships in question are retreating from their missile-launching enemy).

Final velocity of 333,102.213 km/s - hang on, that's faster than the speed of light, and the book is clear that the tech base for Mr. Trang's space navy doesn't include FTL travel.  But this sort of makes sense as a number, obviously your speed at some point has to be higher than the average speed in order to compensate for the fact that you started from zero.

I wasn't completely confident in my results, so I sought out our resident numbers guy, Andrew.  (Andrew was hired as a business analyst, but the manipulation of statistics and information is a large part of that, so Andrew is often pulled into discussions regarding math.)

To my astonishment, after I explained the question, he went to the white board in his office and produced the following off the top of his head:

Well, now I know why we hired Andrew.

Ultimately, the moral of the story is that the authors might not have done full due diligence on their math. (Or maybe their drive technology has a very steep acceleration curve.) For me, the real joke is that the missiles are supposed to explode when they hit their target.  I'm reasonably certain that if a multi-tonne projectile hits a starship while travelling at the speed of light, an explosion would be redundant. I'll leave it to the curious reader to calculate the amount of energy that would result from such an impact - just leave your answers as comments.  The actual weight of the missiles doesn't appear in the book anywhere to the best of my knowledge, so feel free to make your own estimate as to an appropriate weight for a weapon of this sort****.  Good luck - and please show your work.

- Sid

* 40 Eridani A is generally considered to be the location of Vulcan. This is one of those things that was never clearly defined in the original series, but when science fiction author James Blish was hired to turn the episodes into short stories for the purposes of novelization, he chose 40 Eridani A as being a likely candidate based on its distance from Earth, and over time this has become accepted as canon.

 ** To give you some perspective on that number, the Moon at its furthest from earth is 405,696 kilometers away, so eleven times as far as the Moon.

***AKA distance if you're not a mathematician.

**** As a guideline, a fully loaded F16 Falcon fighter weighs in at about 21 metric tonnes.

EDIT:  Sadly I've had to close down Comments for this posting, I've had one very enthusiastic but somewhat non-linear commenter who is just getting further and further away from the actual topic at hand.  My apologies, Tonyon.
 

Gnomic Statement XIV.

 We never did have a chance to see what colour coat the driver was wearing.

- Sid

P.S.  We followed this vehicle through the U.S. border crossing, and the driving was quite good - like a leaf on the wind...

DON'T PANIC!

 

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. 

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

May 24th marks the fifteenth anniversary of Towel Day, the annual tribute to the memory of Douglas Adams, author of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.  I've been on and off in my recognition of the day - mostly off this time, I didn't bother to carry the mandatory towel to work with me today, although I did check in at towel.org to see how the rest of the community had celebrated the day.

There was a surprising* (and gratifying)  amount of media attention in addition to the wide array of fan activities, but if there is a prize for the most appropriate event, it would have to go to the Royal Institution of Great Britain** and European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake, currently serving on the International Space Station:

When we had a chance to send something up to @astro_timpeake on the ISS, this is what we sent. Happy #TowelDay! pic.twitter.com/9QOFshn9Sv

— Ri_Science (@Ri_Science) May 25, 2016

I think that Mr. Adams would heartily approve.  Beat that, NASA.

- Sid

P.S.  If someone reading this knows how to center an embedded Twitter™ posting, please let me know.

* For the most part, May the 4th generally gets a lot more action in the press.

** In some ways the British equivalent of The Planetary Society, but with a broader scientific mandate.

Return of the Attack of the Weregeek.

 

This morning, my co-workers and I were galvanized by a shriek of panic from Kate, the administrative assistant who works at our reception area.  Everyone within earshot - which was actually just everyone, it was pretty loud shriek - rushed to her desk in order to help with whatever issue had caused Kate to start screaming.

As it turned out, Kate had seen an insect on her desk.  She said that it was a centipede, but added that it was huge - "Like Godzilla!"

Unfortunately, as previously established, this sort of comment often gets a reaction from me which may not be exactly what the commenter is expecting.

"Well, no, not Godzilla, Godzilla was a lizard."

"Hmmmm....it wouldn't be Gidrah or Rodan, they could fly, and were also sort of lizards.  Mothra was a giant insect, but obviously more of a giant moth than a centipede.  Gosh, I'm certain that Godzilla must have fought a giant centipede at some point, but I cannot for the life of me bring a picture of it to my mind.  I'm sorry, Kate, I'll have to do some research and get back to you."

Leaving our department head Peter courageously searching the top of Kate's desk, I returned to my workstation, where a rapid* Google search revealed that my memory is either better or worse than I thought.  As I thought, none of the celluloid incarnations of Japan's favourite giant lizard ever fought a centipede monster, but that wasn't the only option when searching for Godzilla's foes.

There was also a short-lived spinoff animated series based on the unfortunate** 1998 Roland Emmerich film which starred Matthew Broderick (and Godzilla). Godzilla: The Series was based on the idea that one of Godzilla's monstrous hatchlings had survived the events of the movie, and imprinted on Broderick's character - perhaps because of residual pheromones from his close encounter with Godzilla's saliva in the movie, I don't completely remember the details. (In my defense, it's been almost 20 years since I last watched the series.)

In Metamorphosis, the ninth episode of Season TWO of G:TS, Godzilla Junior did in fact cross paths with a giant centipede named Megapede.  Using this as a guide, I did a quick image search, and found a few pictures of the many-legged menace.

At this point, Kate, somewhat recovered from her ordeal, approached my desk with a question about digital letterhead.  I showed her the picture that starts this posting and explained that it was a picture of Megapede.

"Yes, that is absolutely what I saw - and Megapede, that's exactly the right name.  Thank you very much!!"

And she returned to her desk, which under the circumstances demonstrated remarkable courage.  If that thing was still lumbering around on my desk and made another appearance, I would probably scream much, much louder than she did.

- Sid

* We're on company time, after all.

** Full confession:  I actually kind of like the 1998 version of Godzilla.  I fully admit that Matthew Broderick really doesn't carry the movie, but the supporting actors cheerfully cast aside any desire to take the film seriously and do everything but chew the scenery in order to help move things forward.  (Jean Reno's Elvis Presley imitation is particularly memorable.)  Not only that, but I thought that the FX team did a good job of envisioning what an actual giant mutant lizard might look like, rather than a rather obvious man in a rubber suit.***

*** When the movie first came out, I commented favourably on the CGI version of Godzilla to my friend Alan, who immediately announced that he preferred a man in a rubber suit.  I gravely promised not to quote him out of context, although I've been tempted more than once over the intervening years.